 Hi there, my name is Sandy Alnok. I'm an artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and I want to talk a little about giving the gift of Bible journaling. Christmas is coming or if you're watching this at another time then Easter might be on the way and sharing your passion for Bible journaling might be a great gift to give to someone. The Inspire Bible is usually a really good place to start especially for people who aren't artistic, don't consider themselves artistic, but they'd like to color something in because these Bibles have art down the sides and they have just scriptures written out and pictures going with them so you can just color them in, study the scriptures on the page beforehand, so you have something to meditate on while you do the coloring. You can do crazy backgrounds and all sorts of Bible journaling techniques or you can just stay simple and color in the images that are provided. The one I'm flipping through right now is the regular version of the Inspire Bible. It has a bunch of different colors of covers available, some with flowers, some plain colors. This one is the large print version of the same Bible, the Inspire Bible, and thank you to the publisher for sending it to me so I could share it with you. A lot of people have asked if there is a large print version and there is links in the do we do to all of the things mentioned in this video. But the pictures are blown up as well as the words on the page blown up so it's not as though everything's rerun like the text is not reflowed to make it fit for this. It's just basically blowing up the entire thing and what I'm going to do is compare a particular spread and then I'm going to color this picture in the large print version but I'm going to compare it to the one in the regular print version and you can see how much easier it's going to be to do that lettering in the large print version rather than the small and there's also a significant difference in the text size so for those whose eyes are aging like mine you may find the large print version to be easier. The pagination is also the same so the way that that could be helpful if you want to get one version for you and one version for someone who is a person you'd like to gift from a distance say your grandmother or your grandchild you want to get them a comparable version study the scriptures together talk about it email about it Facebook about it and share your artwork that you do from each one of the scriptures it's a way that you can say on page 372 is this picture that I'm working on and here's what the scripture says and this is what God told me about it so you can study along with someone else by just using the same page numbers. I recommend getting some watercolor pencils or I'm using inktense pencils to go along with the Bible gift because that's going to help them get started and the reason I almost recommend watercolor pencils or inktense pencils over regular ones is that they can be used as regular pencils so I could just color them as I'm doing right here and leave the pencil as it is I don't have to actually do any of the watercoloring but you have the option when you have a watercolor pencil there is a set of 12 inktense pencils that has a really good set of basic colors that would help somebody new at this totally get started and be happy with that color selection and on my blog is a little swatch card of the colors that are available in that set of 12 if you want to see kind of what those colors are so I'm just scribbling the color in here and filling it in in sort of general ways I'm not being real careful with it I'm not worried about making everything blendy blendy putting a few colors in more concentration in some darker areas but really I'm just layering different colors over so it can feel almost like a fall harvest time scene I could take a brush a wet brush and kind of wash over all that to blend it but what I want to show you is a different way to do it that won't add as much water to the page which means it won't get as wrinkly crinkly which is using a baby wipe I've wrapped it around my finger so that I can kind of push that color using my finger right along with the baby wipe and while it has the green on it I'm going to do all the darker green parts and just smush the pencil around look how quickly that covers a large area and then I'll change it up if I'm going to switch to an area that has more yellow in it like the tops of all of the field has more yellow and I can just smush across it really easily this will not only not be as wrinkly it'll also dry quicker so you can go back in and do some more work there's some scrolly things in the corner that I'm going to go in with an orange pencil and work on and it just gives you some different options to use the baby wipe instead of the brush but you can also give the person a brush to go along with their set of pencils here with each of the words that are in this I'm going to do a two-tone coloring so I'm going to put one color on the top one color on the bottom and fill that in with the pencil it doesn't even have to be perfect with the pencil because when I move that pigment around with a brush it's going to blend them nicely and you can see how nicely these silver brushes point this is a number six and I think if you're just looking to get one brush to go with some Bible journaling a number six would be a good size especially for this large print version you might want to go a little smaller if you're going to do the small print version or the regular print but I have done it with a number six you just have to be a little more careful these brushes point so well they get such a nice fine point on them that you can do a lot of fine detail with them after all of this was dry I was able to go back in and do another layer of color to intensify color in certain areas you certainly don't have to do that but you just wait until it's completely dry and then you can do another layer over top and so I'm just going to add some dark colors in some of the deepest shadow areas to increase the contrast in my picture and I'm just kind of scribbling in between some of them I'm using the shadows that the artist already put into the picture to follow along and throw some color in just kind of scribbling it and being real real loose with it and then when I take my brush to it I can just move it around and I'm always careful when I do my Bible journaling not to use a super wet brush it's kind of more of a damp brush wipe the brush off on your fingers or on a paper towel or something so that you're not putting a ton of moisture down but you do end up with a little bit of wrinkly crinkliness sometimes even with these careful techniques but if you want to flatten it out a little bit more just put a sheet of computer paper above and below and I'm going to apologize for my crazy camera focusing I didn't realize it was going to do this weird focusing thing but just iron over top of it you can see how quickly I'm ironing it's set on its highest setting pull my papers out and it's done is I know it's out of focus but it is much flatter than it was if you're using anything with acrylic or with a metallic in it then don't do this technique because the heat will melt them and then I'll stick to your paper I often get asked what's my favorite Bible because the Inspire Bible is not my favorite because I'm an artist and I like to create my own things so I'm going to show you my very favorite Bible it's an expensive one so if you have somebody who really is going to put their heart and soul into it this is an excellent option it's got this beautiful leather cover on the front and this is in a trans this one particular one is in a translation that I love and I would recommend that you focus on what translation you want to read the scriptures in not only whether or not they have the right kind of other elements in it but this one is my my study Bible it's the translation that I love the best and love to work with the most and now that I've perfected I shouldn't say perfected I've done a lot of learning about my techniques in my other Bibles I also have those other Bibles to use as testing to try a different medium try different colors and different applications as well as I have those translations now to study and I can see how one version translates a verse compared to another so it's a great library of resources as well as lots of places to practice things and in this Bible this is just the one that I'm going to be using more ongoing more long term for myself because I love this leather cover on it so much now one of the other Bibles that I like a lot and if you know somebody you're going to give this to who's really an artist and they really have some skills then the interleave Bible is a good one to go with because this has a blank page in between every page of scriptures so you have lots of room to do your artwork without interfering with but you can also interfere with the text so you can interact with it or not interact with it you can just do one page or you can do the full spread now I would recommend if you're going to gift a Bible to someone and get them started in Bible journaling that you do a page or two in their Bible maybe on your favorite verses so that when they get it they have some sort of an idea where to begin so on this one this is watercolor pencils I might do that on my favorite verse to share with them what the possibilities are for when they start creating so here's a couple more Bible journaling videos if you're interested in those there is a link in the doobly do to my Bible journaling class online it's an inexpensive walkthrough of mediums and how they work and what bleeds through and what doesn't how I went through my testing process so you can do the same as you embark on your Bible journaling adventure okay I will see you guys later take care and have an awesome day